Promise Fulfilled
by wackywhateleys
Summary: Three weeks after the Guertena exhibition, Garry has found Ib again. But both are still scarred by the same thing that binds them together, and the meeting is more bittersweet than he'd hoped. (Oneshot.)


After three weeks, he'd found Ib's house. All he'd had to go by was a handkerchief and a little girl's name, but it was a unique name, and it was enough. Her family was a prominent one. Garry stood on the sidewalk and looked up at the tall narrow front steps, the big front doors, the perfectly clean brick, the glossy black banisters of the house he had decided to call on. The velvet curtains were tied back to reveal glimpses of glowing rooms and fine furniture. _No wonder Ib's clothes are so nice._

He took a breath and gathered the courage to ring the bell.

After a moment, Ib's mother answered the door, and blinked in surprise.

The man on her doorstep was tall, young, handsome; his coat was ripped and ragged and his lavender-dyed hair fell into his eyes. She didn't know him. But she knew he was _not_ her kind of people, not her family's kind of people, and she nervously glanced up and down the street, to be sure no neighbors were watching on this well-off city block.

"Yes?" she said.

He cleared his throat, scuffed his boot, and tried to look her in the eyes, finally managing a nervous laugh. "Um…my name's Garry. I know you and I have never met, ma'am. But I was wondering if I might be allowed to see your daughter? Ib?"

The man's voice was gentle and soothing, and pushed as high out of the masculine range as if would go without sounding downright unnatural—the affectation grated on Ib's mother's nerves.

"How do you know Ib?" Her posture stiffened.

"We met in the art gallery at the Guertena exhibition a few weeks ago," he said. "I accidentally cut my hand, silly me, and she lent me her handkerchief. Such a little dear. Real lace and everything! I couldn't give it back to her all dirty like that, so I said I would clean it up for her." He produced the handkerchief from his pocket. It was the very same one Ib's mother had given her. Perfectly clean.

"If I could just give it back to her, ma'am, I wouldn't bother you any more. I'm sorry. This must be really strange." He fidgeted

Ib's mother looked into this off-putting young man's eye and saw humbleness, earnestness, loyalty looking back at her—not what she'd expected from this effeminate thing with the rockstar coat and tight clothes. She hesitated, then turned into the grand foyer of the house. "Ib," she called.

After only a moment, Ib came trotting to the door, quietly inquisitive.

"Garry," she said, and her eyes widened.

He smiled tenderly down at her. "Hello, Ib," he said. "I came back, just as promised." He got down on one knee. "And here is your pretty little handkerchief, all clean!"

Ib's mother was baffled: her reserved little daughter beamed and threw her arms around the strange man's neck.

"I'm so glad you came back! I…didn't think you would…"

"After all that? Ib honey, I'd have to be a grade-A jerk to never come check on you."

Ib pulled away from the hug with the handkerchief clenched tightly in her white little fist. A quiet smile lingered around the corners of her eyes. "Mom, can Garry come in?"

"Yes…he can…Why don't I make some tea and you can take it in the parlor," Ib's mother said. She was still bewildered. Ib was a good girl, but hardly the type to lend her prized handkerchief to a strange man in a strange place. And the handkerchief's safe return was no explanation for this emotional display.

She backed away, watching them enter the parlor, then turned and left.

Ib led Garry into the house (he gaped at the chandelier overhead) and into a richly paneled sitting room. A painting of Ib's family hung over a lit fireplace. They looked like humorless corpses packed in a box. Garry shivered.

She sat down in an armchair that could have been a museum piece—never touched, never sat upon—and delicately spread out her skirts. Garry admired her, a little lady with such grace and poise.

A big clock ticked somewhere in the room. Ib sat there like a pretty doll with her hands clasped in her lap and looked at Garry, unblinking, her eyes still content but increasingly less joyful. Garry swallowed and smoothed out his coattails in unconscious imitation of Ib's skirts. He wished she would break the silence, but he couldn't expect a child to start a conversation. Ib would be content to stare at things all day.

Really she was wondering what she would start with; she had so many things to tell him. She'd seen so many pretty things in the street and learned so many things in school. She couldn't decide what she wanted him to know first.

Finally she parted her lips and said, "My mom will bring sugar and cream with the tea. Do you like sugar and cream?"

"Oh, yes, I do," Garry said, glad for something to latch onto. "I'm such a wimp, really I am. I can't drink coffee or tea without putting loads and loads of stuff in it, ahahaha." His high laugh echoed a little in the big room and Ib gave a tiny smile.

"I don't like tea without stuff in it either," she said. "But I think coffee's just gross."

"I suppose it's an acquired taste, yes. But you might like it someday, Ib."

The insistent ticking of the great clock made him nervous. His nerves had gotten worse after the art gallery. The nightmares had come more often.

"Maybe," she said dismissively. "But a lot of things grown-ups like I don't think I'll ever like." A few beats from the clock. "I don't think I'm very interested in eating snails and Brussel sprouts, or in…f-famous paintings and stuff. "

"When you're older you might appreciate the genius at work," Garry said. "When I was your age, I thought there was nothing special about the Mona Lisa—"

Was it just him? Or did the clock's ticking get louder even as he spoke?

"I thought she was just an ugly woman with a strange expression on her face—"

He turned around, looking for the source of the noise, half expecting it to be looming right behind him. But he didn't see one. Was he imagining it?"

"—but it turned out she stood for a new era in portrait painting…"

"Are you ok?" Ib asked.

"Is there a clock in here?" he said.

She pointed at a tiny cuckoo clock on the wall by the door. It seemed far too small to produce a noise like that. "Do you have to go somewhere?" she asked, disappointment in her voice.

"No. No, I can stay as long as you'd like."

On the coffee table between them there were art magazines, all turned onto their backs and covered with coasters, as if to keep them from rising up and walking away.

Ib noticed Garry's trapped look even if he didn't.

"Are you pretty scared of the museum still?" she said.

He laughed nervously. "I guess it hasn't done anything good for my nerves."

"Me too," she said. She flinched, thinking back towards it again. "I can't stop thinking about Mary. I can't believe we burned her up…I can't believe she came after us too. I was really happy to see somebody my age in there, but then she tricked us and wasn't even a person. Do you think all paintings are as unfriendly as the Guertena paintings? Why did those come alive? Do you think that might happen with any other paintings?"

"I don't know, honey," he said, but all of her fears rung true. "Well, we haven't gotten attacked by any more crazy paintings yet…"

"My dad collects art," she whispered, pained. "It all hangs in the hallway upstairs, and I have to go down the entire hallway to go to the bathroom at night…"

The noise of the clock ticked in between Garry's ears.

"I understand," he said.

He wondered—why had Ib even been in that other gallery? Despite the bond that had forged between them in the hours (or had it been days?) they'd known each other, he still knew so little about her. He wanted to reach out to her. He wanted to tell her about the long nights of terrified paralysis, the growing nameless dread, the creeping fear of isolation that threatened to smother him, because that was all they had in common. But she was nine years old. She had been through enough horrible stuff already. She didn't need to hear about even more.

"Will you tell me about it?" he asked. "It'll help."

She was shivering like a brittle leaf in a fickle breeze.

Ib loved his soft voice, almost like her mother's; but her mother would never believe this story if she told it. Garry was the only one who had been there with her.

"I don't like art anymore," she said. "At all. Or even anything that just reminds me of one of his paintings…I can't stop thinking about it. I can't sleep at night, and sometimes I wake up and think that I'm still in there…" Her shaking grew worse. She was self-conscious, but couldn't stop it. "And I wonder where you went…I think that I'm stuck with Mary again and you got separated from us…" Seeing him here, being asked about it, the memories were reawakened.

"Oh, Ib. It's not just you, honey, I promise…" he said, grabbing her hand across the coffee table and giving it a gentle squeeze. "It's not just you. It scares me too."

Ib nodded, avoiding his gaze, trying to hide eyes that were filling up with tears. He massaged her palm with his thumb.

"It scares me too," he repeated. "It gets better. You just have to think of something else, ok? No matter how hard it tries, don't let it get control of you."

She held his hand tighter, and nodded more, and sobbed audibly once or twice, and wiped her face on her clean fresh-ironed sleeve.

There came a clatter at the doorway. Ib and Garry looked up to see Ib's mother watching them with the tea tray in her hands. Garry let Ib's hand drop onto the coffee table.

"Hello, ma'am," he said awkwardly, leaning away from Ib.

Ib's mother gave him an ugly glance. "Ib, what's wrong?" She set the tea tray down and leaned over her daughter, coming between her and Garry, blocking him out.

Ib shook her head. She wouldn't tell.

"I'm sorry, ma'am. I wonder if my showing up so suddenly might have upset Ib…" This meeting was not quite the joyful reunion he had envisioned. Now he saw himself: the out-of-place intruder, the lonely outcast desperately scrabbling for any kind of companionship he could find. "Maybe I should go…"

"No, Garry," Ib choked. She looked up at her mother, then back down again to sniff and wipe her face. Dully it occurred to her that this was what the handkerchief was for. "Mom, please, can Garry stay? Just for a little bit."

"I won't take up too much of your time," Garry assured her, more for the benefit of Ib's mother.

"It's alright…I suppose," Ib's mother said. Already her daughter was drifting away from her, at age nine. She backed out the door, fretting; she wanted so desperately to know what was going on, but maybe she couldn't understand.

Garry looked for the shadow of her feet under the door and didn't see them. She was off to the side, with only her head leaning towards the door. Being rich didn't make her stupid.

"It's ok to cry about it, Ib," he said.

Still, Ib struggled to hold her tears back, trying to show him that she was grown-up as a nine-year-old could be. "I-I-I never cried about it before," she said defensively.

"I know," he said gently. "I believe it. You're a strong girl, Ib."

She turned her gleaming red eyes onto him, and her face was pink with tearstains. "I couldn't have got out without you, Garry. You were the only good thing that happened the whole time."

"Was I?"

"Uh-huh."

And even with the hellish beat of the clock ticking away the seconds he used up, and the knowledge that the creeping dread would never really go away, that ineloquent little affirmation made it a little better. Even if only here in the daylight in someone else's house, he and she were still together. They were tied together by the waking dream, the memory.

Ib understood it too. Garry was her friend, but he was a grown-up, and she really knew nothing about him. If not for the gallery, they would have had no reason to speak to each other. She would have passed him in the gallery halls, and thought he looked strange, and walked closer to the wall as he passed her by.

She skirted the table and sat next to him on the couch. He put his arm around her.

"Garry, do you get scared a lot?"

"I do."

"I can tell." She leaned into his side, feeling the strong worn fabric of his coat and knowing how he had wrapped her in it and run as fast as he could. "You're really brave anyway."

"Only because you gave me a reason to be."

"Do you remember when we were standing in the sunlight in Mary's sketchbook, and you mentioned that café where you went to eat macarons?"

Ib's face was clearing up, but Garry had only begun to let the first tears come. _We made it out._ "Would you like to go?" _I can actually sit here and say this to her. Both of us got out safe._

"Uh-huh." She smiled.

He smiled back. "Then we'll have to do that," he said, the tears streaming down his face. "We can go as many times as you'd like."


End file.
